Getting to participate in iSEED Europe has been a great experience. I enjoyed having the opportunity to take these classes while in Europe getting to view the material from a new lens that I don’t think would have been possible on Rice’s campus.
I think that one lasting impact of this program will be the time I spent exploring both cities and getting to learn about the culture and lifestyle in both locations. Both Amsterdam and Paris have different cultures and auras from the US and from each other. Getting to experience the two cities through the class either site visits or from having to gather materials for prototyping, allowed us to see more than just the tourist experience in both locations.
I really enjoyed getting to work in the various teams as well. Through this teamwork I believe that I improved my communication skills and my ability to work with others. I got to work in roughly 4 different distinct teams that had different strength and weaknesses.
While in Paris I had the opportunity to try escargots (snails), which was much better than I was expecting. To begin the presentation was very nice, we had six snails on a metal plate with a bi-fork and a shell holder. Each was covered in butter and seasonings, but you couldn’t see the snails in the shell. To eat them I grabbed the snail with the holder and then using the thin fork scooped out the snail. It was amazing, it was very buttery, well seasoned, and slightly chewy.
Another great food experience that I had while in Paris was the crepes. Very few places in Houston have gluten free crepes however many places in Paris have Galette de sarrasin which are gluten free. This was a great experience having many different sweet and savory crepes. My favorite was a place called Creperie Elo right near the Learning Planet Institute, they had the best banana caramel crepes that I had while in Paris.
I am very grateful to have the opportunity to participate in these classes in both Amsterdam and Paris. It has been a great experience getting to learn about the designing and prototyping process and then to put what we learn into action in each of the two cities. The classes had a flow of first in Amsterdam learning about how to formulate an idea for a solution for a problem and then in Paris we practiced rapid prototyping of solutions. I liked this flow because I feel as though we learned the full designing process almost from start to finish with two distinct focuses on first finding the problem and then finding the solution. I think that this experience really builds on top of the ENGI120 experience in that it helps shed light on the reason why the design process in 120 is set up the way it is. My favorite part of my experience in Paris was definitely spending time with the people on the trip. A couple fun memories were going in front of the eiffel tower, watching the latest spider man movie, and just going out to eat and explore the city.
I think that this is a great experience for students who want to get a deeper understanding of the design process, specifically identifying problems and rapid prototyping. I would highly recommend this program to students doing the ENGI minor, and for students who have no ENGI background as well.